A quarter of US-trained scientists eventually leave

"Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating."

I believe there will be a significant "discontinuity" in the data beginning in 2025. Likely along the lines of (1) US-born science majors going abroad for their PhD's (and likely staying there afterwards), and (2) a major decline in foreign students coming to the US. Blocking disbursement of ongoing grants, immediate and dramatic slashing funding for the sciences, holding up universities under pain of blocking federal funding, eliminating fellowships, firing government scientists, stuffing agencies and commissions with politically appointed yes men, having oaths of fealty in all but name, deporting and blocking return of foreign students, and many more actions of similar character tend to fo that.

One of the greatest national scientific establishments was irreparably damaged in a matter of months. No discussion, no process -- just pulling the rug out. The US will coast for a few years on the technologies that just popped out of the university pipeline of development, but that pipeline is now essentially broken.

On top of that, it is a significant reverse brain drain. Like 20-25 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find tenure track CS faculty at most America programs let alone a major program lime Cal or UIUC consider returning to a program like Shanghai Jiao Tong or IIT Bombay compared to today.

It has upskilled academia in those countries, but we also lost talent who could have remained here.

Your suggestion would have fewer fresh eyes to look at the problem. If the scientific enterprise were just about churning out widgets, then yes it’s better to have permanent staff.

But having a strong training pipeline for the globe is a huge plus for US prestige, and the top people are still offered jobs as faculty or industry within the country, so it still a net gain for USA. But it’s brutally competitive for the individual scientists

The grad-student system in science at US R1 universities is sort of like a dollar auction. You know how a dollar auction works? I have a dollar bill, and I'll give it to whoever bids the highest for it—as long as both they and the #2 bidder pay me their final bids. The #2 bidder gets nothing. Bidding can start at 5¢. Once the bid goes over a dollar, the two remaining bidders are no longer competing to win free money; they're jockeying to lose less. It typically goes up to 2 to 5 dollars before one of them decides to cut their losses.

Numerous doctoral students (and postdocs, and adjuncts) are competing for a much smaller number of tenure-track positions with their research work. If their publication record looks just a little better than the #2 candidate, they can escape from the postdoc grind and land a nice assistant professorship. Then it's only seven more years of busting their ass before they find out whether they washed out, or are set for life with a cushy associate professorship, maybe a full professorship.

People are willing to sacrifice a lot for that. But the vast majority of those who make the sacrifice don't make it, like the #2 bidder in the dollar auction. They put in years on somewhat-above-minimum-wage grad-student and postdoc stipends, doing incredibly difficult and sometimes dangerous work, often postponing childbearing, leaving behind their families each time they have to move to a new university, and either leaving behind their intimate partners or uprooting them as well. All of that redounds to the glory of the PI who runs the lab they work in—but many of those doing all that work regret the sacrifice.

Scientific progress isn't just a matter of doling out research grants and possessing fancy lab equipment. It needs talent, but that isn't nearly enough—the talented people need to work incredibly hard for many years to make real progress. For decades the US has been recruiting the top talent from the rest of the world with this dollar-auction game, paying them peanuts to sacrifice the best years of their lives.

A doctorate doesn't sound like a bad life to me, really. But you have to feel that the system, like minor-league baseball, is kind of taking advantage of doctoral students' hopes and dreams to get the rather astounding rate of scientific progress we see today (at least by some measures). It funds public goods for everyone out of those sacrifices.

The least the US could do would be to show a little more gratitude by guaranteeing them permanent US residency after they graduate, but they don't even get that—many people are kicked out of the US, where they've spent most of their adult lives, when they wash out of the academic pipeline. And the current deplorable administration has promised to worsen this already deplorable situation.

Tried to follow your link. It says: "This program is not available in your country". Wonder why...censorship?